By creating a powerful new gene regulation system called CRISPR-on, Whitehead Institute researchers now have the ability to increase the expression of multiple genes simultaneously and precisely manipulate each gene's expression ...

Biologists from New York University have uncovered new ways our biological clock's neurons use electrical activity to help keep behavioral rhythms in order. The findings, which appear in the journal Current Biology, also p ...

Up to ten per cent of the active genes of an organism that has survived 80 million years without sex are foreign, a new study from the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London reveals. The asexual ...

German researchers have demonstrated for the first time why the molecular cocktail responsible for generating stem cells works. Sox2 and Oct4 are proteins whose effect on cells resembles that of an eraser: ...

Japanese honeybees face a formidable foe in the Asian giant hornet, a fierce predator that can reach 40mm long or larger, but the bees have developed a novel defense mechanism: they create a "hot defensive bee ball," swarming ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- For the first time, scientists have discovered that a poorly understood class of RNA produced in a mammal's cells during a respiratory virus attack may affect the outcome of the infection. ...

(Phys.org)—Crime can happen anywhere, but it usually doesn't. Researchers have noticed that criminal activity seems to be concentrated in self-perpetuating hotspots. Crime leads to more crime. Then, from ...

The molecular mechanisms whereby a spectrum of dahlias, from white to yellow to red to purple, get their colour are already well known, but the black dahlia has hitherto remained a mystery. Now, a study ...

Every cell in our body has exactly the same DNA, yet every cell is different. A cell's identity is determined by the subset of genes that it activates. But how does a cell know which genes to turn off and ...

Some RNA molecules spend time in a restful state akin to hibernation rather than automatically carrying out their established job of delivering protein-building instructions in cells, new research suggests.

A decade ago, gene expression seemed so straightforward: genes were either switched on or off. Not both. Then in 2006, a blockbuster finding reported that developmentally regulated genes in mouse embryonic ...

A new tool for neuroscientists delivers a thousand pinpricks of light to a chunk of gray matter smaller than a sugar cube. The new fiber-optic device, created by biologists and engineers at the Massachusetts ...

Researchers have successfully isolated and sequenced the entire messenger RNA – the "genetic photocopies" – contained in the nucleus of a single brain cell. This research, published in the journal Proceedings of ...